December 2007
33 posts
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This morning I soaped, shampooed, forgot what I was doing, and did it again.
‘Lather, Rinse, Repeat’ is in dire need of an end condition.
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Domainiac
I’ve purchased 17 domain names in the past week! Here are a few of my fa*****es but I won’t s***e them yet. D***S***.COM BA******RO****.COM n*****.com & .us n*****s.com & .us n*****ist.com & .org n*****ists.com& .org n*****ism.com & .org — jakoblodwick But did he use the Captcha technique?! Neologist & Narcissist spring to mind… though I guess...
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Can lip service be good?
Had a great discussion with my friend Anand today. In college he said that if we could just get people to think about sustainability, we’d all be in a much better place. I’m happy to report that “sustainability” & “green” is now at least in everyone’s vocabulary.
One thing I find fascinating, is that it can still be a good thing when business pays lip...
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Comments?!
At the behest of a good friend, I’ve added comments to my tumblog. Turns out Disqus makes this disqustingly simple. Enjoy! I’ll clean the UI up later…
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'08 Predications
Predictions for 2008 are a popular topic. Here are a few:
Negatives:
Digg’s quality of news continues to drop, Internet adopts the phrase “Ubuntu” for social spam.
Semantic web won’t be as interesting as a single, well thought-out website.
RSS continues to face stiff competition from “bookmarks”, the “refresh button”, and “links”.
I...
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Whine and be Rewarded?
If you have a blog, and a bad customer service experience, you have the ingredients for remuneration: blog about it. The net has seen this strategy work over and over, and I think it’s a generally a good thing: it calls attention to the importance of customer service, and sharpens companies that already excel at it.
There is a dark side, and my mother discovered it.
Last week, she opened...
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“Verbosity when alone, brevity with company.”
– Adam Conroy
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Captchas Make Great Domain Names
Coming up with a cool, unregistered domain name can be as frustrating as playing whack-a-mole on the moon, and you forget to bring the mole (and even if you had remembered, moles are extinct. And their closest genetic relatives are even more bizarre looking).
Worry no more! At our super-secret-startup-world-headquarters, we invented (or stumbled on) a solution…
Google Captcha codes make...
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Thoughts and Behavior
I am of the opinion that you only ever own 2 things in this world: Your thoughts and your behavior.
You need both to live, but both govern each other in a way that’s sometimes too subtle to realize. It’s like the check and balance system of the mind and body.
If you find your thoughts clouded, try changing your behavior. Your thoughts may follow. If you find your behavior...
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Then, Now & Next
A quick observation:
1997: “Don’t put your real name on the Internet, are you crazy? You’ll get murdered!”
2007: You’re in violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service if you don’t use your real name.
A prediction:
2017: If you continue exist OUTSIDE the Internet you will be found guilty of reality-loitering, punishable by exile to MySpace.
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How 2 Nerdfighters Took Over YouTube -... →
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Stravinsky & Death Metal
Listened to the “Musical Language” episode of the awesome Radio Lab WNYC podcast.
The second section of the episode covers Igor Stravinsky’s public premiere of the highly dissonant “Rite of Spring”; It caused a riot. I think it’d be more accurate to say it caused a mosh-pit.
“If Stravinsky’s stated intention was “to send them all to...
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“Once you’re good at connecting consumers with advertisers, it’s hard to be good at anything else.” - David Sarnoff
Anybody out there have a take on what it could mean? Maybe that it’s easy to get comfortable with money?
— rickyv
I think it is in part because of that comfort, the rest due to momentum, culture, and the business processes in place. Pre-Internet,...
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Facebook in 30 years →
This got an honest ‘LOL’ out of me.
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“Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking.”
– Johnny Vulcan (via Ricky)
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Big & Simple Ideas
There are two types of Internet startups….
Those that invent new technology.
Those that invent new cultures.
Google is an awesome example of #1. Tumblr is a fantastic example of #2.
Tumblr does very little that is ‘new’, and everything it does was already possible (and presumably still easy to replicate). However, it pulls together familiar things in such a controlled way,...
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Last word on Internet phones for the week.
Had an interesting weekend and I’m reminded of how different the future is going to be (or already is?)
We’ve all set around with our friends and asked “You know that actor, who was in that movie? What’s his name?” Each person struggles to remember seeing who can come up first wit the answer.
Our group of mobile-internet-enabled friends, however, takes a deep...
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"I do not enjoy receiving email."
I’m opposed to the concept of the email inbox, which is like a personal to-do list than anyone can add to. I find it extremely imposing and it creates a lot of anxiety for me. We have to think of alternatives.
— jakoblodwick
A problem worth solving, for a few reasons. When I think about where the web is heading, the “Individual Revolution”, it reminds me of something like (but...
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Coding Horror: Blacklists Don't Work →
Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror tells it like it is: Why Anti-Virus software is doomed to suck.
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The Evolution of Personal Publishing →
Had an interesting conversation with some friends at Boston Beer Works this weekend. One of the questions that came up was “What is the point of Twitter vs. Facebook?”
Read/Write Web does a great job explaining the spectrum of social & blogging tools on the web.
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Tumblr's Reposting Mechanism
Jace: i still haven't really figured out whether I understand what's going on at tumblr. the reblogging thing might be lost on me
Me: its like tumblr specific commenting, think of it that way.
Jace: is that it? is it too simple?
Me: well no, there's some genius in it. so by default, you can't comment on tumblr blogs, but you effectively can if you have your own tumblog (by reblogging, and adding your 2-cents)
Me: now, for anyone else following the original person they can see your 'comments' (by following who reposted). But again, even that feature is only available to people inside the tumblr community.
Me: the 'bonus' though, is that by following the comments, you can discover new blogs since each commentor MUST have a blog to comment. So it is a discovery mechanism (again, keeping you coraled in tumblr) and a way to ensure comments are by people committed to sharing blog posts, not by random idiots who leave flame droppings.
Jace: yeah, I can appreciate the inclusive, secure aspect of that. not sure I'm riproaring to try and insert myself into a preexisting closedish community though.
Me: I guess because it's a self-contained culture and if you don't consider open-commenting critical to you, your blogs are still effectively public.
Jace: yeah. actually, I don't even need commmenting on my "blog" I'm much less interested in reposting links and such from other blogs, but rather in creating a winding narrative of human presence on the web.
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Conduit Labs →
Boston startup. Awesome. Love the new website, great vibe!
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Fb ain't goin anywhere.
The tales of Facebook’s “death” are greatly exaggerated.
Do I believe they made a costly mistake with the default behaviour of Beacon? Yup.
Did they handle the tech-world shit-storm as best they could? Nope.
Are they going away as a result? F**K no.
I logged on today. My friend is getting engaged, some other friend is throwing a party. A third friend is back in town...
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xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and... →
Twittering
So Bobby Andresen, of PixelImplosion was kind enough to convince me to start twitterring. I can feel it’s addictive pull, but I’m most interested in exploring it to see how its culture & form shape the communications. That is, I’m no stranger to reaching out randomly via commenting in forums, Facebook messages to ‘strangers’. I’ve developed a sense of what...
